Working Titles

If writing a novel is like having a baby, then titling it is like naming your kid.

And parents fret over the names of their children. Big time. Have you seen the sheer number and size of baby name books these days? Not to mention the power of a tool like my beloved BehindTheName.com — if titles are baby names, then a quick manual on how to title a work might come in handy.

Today I want fill your titular arsenal with multiple arms that will level up the caliber of your titles. Then I hope to encourage you to arm yourself with several of them going into the final phases of publication. With a handful of solid titles ready, you’ll never get shamed over an editor’s lack of choices:

Thematic Quote— The most common practice you’ll encounter is authors who title their books using loose references to the works of other authors. Call it due deference, if you’d like, but sometimes you get the impression that an author simply liked the quote and has yet to read the work from which they derived the quote. The Sound and the Fury, And the Mountains Echoed, and Leviathan Wakes all use this. To do it yourself, call to mind your major theme, check The Oxford Book of Quotes, Goodreads, or The Dictionary of Anecdotes for quotes related to that theme, pare down the quote, and you’re golden. For instance, I’m writing a piece of Harry Potter Fanfic about feeling welcome in the midst of homelessness. I searched quotes on homelessness and found:

“Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it’s not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you’ve been to. I’m not afraid of being homesick and having no language to live in. I don’t have to be like anyone else. I’m walking on the wall and nobody can stop me.”

…and now my title is A Place in Your Mind, which also echoes one of Dumbledore’s key lines in the series. Leading us to:

Titular Line— Still Alice, Fiddler on the Roof, Singing in the Rain, and To Kill a Mockingbird use titular lines. You write a book, find a line with the deepest thematic resonance — often one closest to the inciting incident or climax — chip it down and use it. I think the best titular line in history is Till We Have Faces because the entire climax of the book is distilled inside those four words. I think Keith Cronin might have something to say about this in the comments — we interacted a bit on the Facebook group and it sounded like he has an alternate to this one.

MacGuffin — A MacGuffin, according to Hitchcock, is an item essential to a plot. Titling your work after such an item is called “eponym.” The Maltese Falcon, Bands of Mourning, The Deathly Hallows, and The Notebook all use this method. You can also do this with people (The Lord of the Rings, The Little Drummer Girl, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Hamlet), actions (The Prestige, Inception, Falling Down, The Renaissance), or places (Camelot, The House of Seven Gables, Brookland). Some titles span categories like Melancholia. The one title that’s a person, place, action, and thing is The Matrix.

Clear and Present Theme — Often authors will state at the outset the theme or themes they intend to engage: War & Peace, Crime & Punishment, Ex Machina, The Young & The Restless, Glory, Sense & Sensibility. All of those are pretty abstract concepts represented in the work as pretty concrete characters and conflicts.

Overarching Metaphor — Sometimes the author will provide a metaphor without comment. You see this in The Fountain; Memento; Synechtoche, New York; Gone with the Wind. My current work in progress features five generations of carpenters in Southern Illinois who fight off the oppression of an oil company with art and love and humor. For that, it seemed good to use the working title “Bell Hammers.”

Cryptonym — I can envision a scenario in which someone might use a cryptonym. A name which has a double meaning and works as an anagram. If Rowling, for instance, titled book two of Harry Potter “Tom Marvolo Riddle,” she would have had even more weight behind the revelation that those letters rearrange into I am Lord Voldemort. Whether any author has done such a thing, I couldn’t say, but ultimately this would simply be a lovechild of the MacGuffin (or eponym) and Titular Line.

You can, in the end, use any combination of these. I encourage you to write towards the apex of your own cleverness. However, keep several on hand in case one tests poorly with small samplings of your audience. And remember: naming the baby isn’t nearly as important as making sure the child grows in wisdom and stature. Better to have a bad name and a good child than a great name for a demon.

That said, we can always try for both: may you have a good title for your great book.

How do you decide on titles for your books? Please share your thoughts and tips!

Wish you could buy this author a cup of joe?

Lancelot Schaubert has sold his written work to markets like The New Haven Review, McSweeney’s, The Poet’s Market, Writer’s Digest (books and magazine), Poker Pro, Encounter, The Misty Review and many other similar markets. He reinvented the photonovel through Cold Brewed and was commissioned by the Missouri Tourism Board to create a second photonovel — The Joplin Undercurrent — that both fictionalizes and enchants the history and culture of Joplin, Missouri.

Comments

Oh, man, titles. I struggle with titles. I still have a completed manuscript on my computer called YAGSIP – Young Adult Ghost Story In Progress. Even harder than naming a single title is naming titles in a series. I struggled with the title for my latest – it’s book four of a space opera series. I knew I wanted it to have some connection to astronomy and physics, so I found an online scientific dictionary and started browsing.

I found the word “parallax” which is defined as the displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight. It’s how astronomers measure stellar distances. But it also resonated with the themes of the story, where the characters see the conflicts from different perspectives.

I need to bookmark this post for future reference, since titles don’t tend to come easily for me. Thanks, Lance!

Oh my pleasure, Momma Lisa. I really love naming things — the medievalists studied how early peoples believed that knowing the true names of things gave you power over them. That’s where “The Name of the Wind” and Tom Bombadil’s Magic both come from. And there’s an old Jewish proverb you probably know: that when a father names his son, he speaks forth in prophecy. I love names and would happily help you any time you need help.

As for Parallax, that’s brilliant and perfect. I wonder if, as a scifi writer, you could name a bit of tech or a ship or a location Parallax in order to double up on your meanings?

1. The Name of the Wind 2. Little Bee (readers are not allowed to share what the book is about) 3. Speaker for the Dead 4. Melancholia (the film) 5. eXistance (film) 6. The Notebook 7. The Little Drummer Girl 8. James and the Giant Peach 9. Bel and the Dragon

I love titling. I’ve worked in marketing at a book publisher for nearly 15 years and titling meetings are some of my favorite times, especially for fiction. However, I do find it easier to title the work of others than my own.

One thing we always try to keep in mind as we title fiction: It should be easily pronounced and easily remembered (both of these are important for aiding word-of-mouth, which is the most powerful sales engine).

That is a WONDERFUL tip, Erin. I had never thought about that, but you’re right: if the phonoaesthetics and metaphor — that is, the poetry — of the title sing in the reader’s ear, then it sticks longer and stronger.

This is indispensable advice, but it’s the reason I have such difficulty with my own titles! As a writer, I want to give my stories titles that represent them thematically, but these titles aren’t always the best marketing tools.

For example, the last novel I completed was a contemporary comedy. My working title, Kagemusha, neatly represents the story from my perspective, as someone who knows it backwards and forwards. But to the average American, it’s totally unpronounceable and meaningless. And even if someone is familiar with the Japanese word kagemusha (“shadow warrior”), they’ll associate it with black-and-white samurai movies and get the impression the book is a serious historical drama. Kagemusha is the perfect title, yet it’s a lousy title because it doesn’t tell potential readers what they’re in for.

That’s a fantastic point, T.K. Sometimes we are too close to the story to properly name her. “Kill your darlings” can absolutely be working titles we prefer: a willingness to consider alternates offered up by others will serve us well if we truly hope to christen our work with the absolute best name possible.

In the end, a variety of choices from which we may narrow down — even rank based on separate categories — would serve us well.

1. Does it match the theme? 2 Does it represent character? 3. Does it illumine the milleu? 4. Does it help make your point? 5. Is it memorable? 6. Is it fun to say?

There are probably more questions we could add to the grid. Other thoughts?

I’d add in song lyrics and biblical quotations as a rich source for titles. Or a blend of the two – hymns. I’ve noticed some of my favorite titles can be traced back to these sources and that they often resonate at a deep level with readers who may not even be aware of the source.

Lance, my collaborative novel is titled “Swirled All the Way to the Shrub,” which resulted from a random comment in a dentist’s office. That will shut enough doors, but just to ensure that the only readers will be the seven remaining fans of Charles Dickens, the co-author and I have characters named Pinky DeVroom, Unctual Natchez and Avi Budenkrantz. Victory is mine!

By the way, I read your “Author in Progress” essay on Reading People (and Writing Them, Too) the other day and thought it was dandy. Title ain’t no slouch either.

Lance, I love naming characters and books. I tend to go for the thematic stuff as opposed to location or other things. I’ve been calling a WIP of mine DAMAGED. Duh. What character isn’t? But I finally hit upon the perfect title and that is BOUND. Because the book is about feeling bound and establishing boundaries.

Sometimes I find an evocative phrase or image – even if it doesn’t capture the essence of the entire book – that just seems to resonate (or maybe just sound kinda cool). So instead of being what you describe as a “titular line,” I suppose it becomes more like an “Easter egg,” in that the reader is likely to come across the line and say, “Oh – so THAT’s where this title came from!”

That’s definitely how it was for “Water for Elephants.” The scene from which I lifted the title is *not* one of the major scenes in the book (in fact, it didn’t even make it into the movie). But I just loved the phrase “water for elephants,” and fortunately, so did Sara Gruen and her publisher. :)

Titles often come first for me (and I’m also The Name-Giver in our household. I named the kids, the dogs, the cat, the car…) and they usually encapsulate that first light of a new story for me. The title for my current WIP is The Education of Sugar Girl, also the title of a poem I wrote picked up for publication earlier this year. The main character is driven by circumstance to become a drug dealer, and yes, it also pays homage to one of my favorite albums: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. So the title, I think, hints at the thematic material and tells the reader this is a coming-of-age story. That’s what the hope is anyway.

I hate picking titles. The one that came to me instantly and will remain is one based on theme. For my other stories, they have cheesy working titles that are nothing more than place-holders until I’m forced to knuckle down and create real titles for them.

Oooh Till We Have Faces is one of my favorite titles ever! I saw it at a friend’s house and without knowing anything else about it begged him to give it to me. I’ve reread it several times over the years, but the title still gives me chills.

Thanks for these suggestions. I struggle with titles as well. Another thing to consider is if it could misrepresent your story. I used Innocent as the title of my memoir of being on welfare, for its double meaning of not guilty/naive, but I had to add a subtitle so readers wouldn’t assume it was a courtroom drama.

The title for a novel I was working on got axed by my critique group for sounding so dismal that no one would choose to read it. I can see why Hanya Yanagihara called his best-seller A Little Life instead of something like The Worst Possible Life You Can Imagine. His title is also good for a chuckle, since the novel is 800+ pages. ;-)

Thanks so much for this post. I’m really not sure if I like the title of my current work in progress and have been wanting to come up with other options but didn’t know where to start! This is just what I needed.

Super helpful tips Lance. I ghostwrote a medical memoir for a spinal neurosurgeon who had faced great adversity in his youth. It took some time to sell him on the title “Backbone” since he was wedded to his medical sensibilities, and a spine surgeon would never use that word. Well, he came round when the publisher, editor, publicist and wife all loved it. What really took time was the subtitle. Not so much a problem with fiction I expect, but with non-fiction, it can take as much brain power as the title sometimes. Will definitely pass this on. Thanks!

That’s such a great title: that’s the key—to win others over to your perspective you must speak common tongue. So many things in English work this way. Not “assertive” but “bold,” not “plead insanity” but “head case,” not “monogamous commitment” but “wedded.” Imagine if “The Notebook” had been titled “The Relational Event Log” or if “The Matrix” had been titled “The Interconnected Neural Network Intended to Suppress the Conscious Natures of Beings Whose Corporal Natures are Used for Electricity.”

Jargon slows us down most of the time. It’s only helpful when talking to insiders, which is precisely what creative writers do not do.

And I think too that subtitles are needed in fiction series. The Name of the Wind takes on a much more menacing tone when you know that it’s “Day One of the Kingkiller Chronicles” and “The Cuckoo’s Calling” sounds less froofy when you know it’s a Cormoran Strike novel.